Flying Shoes

Tags

Death, Home, Ice cream, Michigan, Mother, Munising, munising michigan, Texas

 

My blog is many things to me.  I can share photos, stories of my family, trips I’ve taken, food I’ve eaten, a recipe or something I’ve created (on occasion I am creative), my gardens, my environment.  The list for blogs and their content are as countless as the numbers of people who write them.

Today I’ve decided self-indulgence is my entry.  My mother, Audrey Marie Dolaski is dying, maybe today, perhaps tomorrow but very soon.   I live in Texas; she lives in Munising, Michigan.  She chose to die in her home surrounded by the things she treasures.  What she treasures now are the baby squirrels outside her window, the multitude of birds that come to her feeders, Coke and ice cream, she never was a soda drinker but these days, it’s what she can swallow and eating has become painful. She’s always enjoyed ice cream, only in moderate portions (she always watched her weight carefully).  She’s never been one to over indulge.  Yesterday she described butterscotch with generous portions of the butterscotch veins like it was manna from heaven ☺

These are our conversations, trivial but communication just the same and quality time  over distance using the telephone.  I must do most of the talking and listen carefully as her once strong voice is weak and she is also slowed a bit by pain medication.  She is still as sharp as she ever was, it simply takes her a bit more time to formulate her thoughts and a great deal of effort to express them, as her energy disappears.

Before I make my call I become agitated, wander around my house like a pacing panther, I don’t like to make these calls.  Who wants to poke a stick in a wound?  I know that I need to keep our communication going until she dies, gotten her wings, or flying shoes.

After the call I have a period of many feelings, always tears because I cry easily (one of my weaknesses), it’s just me, although a dying mother is sad! I feel frustrated, not because she is dying, she is 89, will be 90 if she makes it to the 4th of July and she’s made a good life for herself.  We will celebrate her life when the time comes.  My problem is  I’m not certain I heard what she said, if I answered her question with the right answer because I didn’t hear well, I don’t want her to think I’m not listening to her.  I’m still looking for approval (at 65) from a dying woman who I always had a difficult time pleasing and it affects my conversations with her as she dies.

I asked her yesterday if she wanted me to call everyday I didn’t want to disturb her.  To me that was a normal question because mom often didn’t like me to bother her, and she was not shy about  expressing  those feelings.  Yesterday her answer was, “yes call everyday, you are my daughter you can’t bother me.”   That’s amazing for me to hear, also emotional seeing five years ago her answer may have been that she was busy, call later, maybe the next day!

It’s getting around to the time of the day I call my mother and I feel myself already becoming anxious.  This is sad, it’s sad for both of us.  I don’t believe she realizes that I feel this way (a good thing) this is something that I need to simply get over, it is what it is, grow up kind of thing!  It’s life, it’s been my life and I’ve lived it quite well.  Most families have some degree of dysfunction, and mine was not an exception.

My mother deserves my respect, my love, and gratitude, she has it. I can return to the past and speculate about what might have been, but  the reality was my life, one doesn’t go backward.   None of us come with a set of instructions how to properly parent, we parent by our past observations, our personalities our faults and hope for the best possible future for our children.

Life Isn’t Always Without Thorns

Tags

carol jean, Child, cousin ed, Death, horrible accident, memories of my life, Memory, Michigan, Mother, Parent, sister carol, stage cancer, Trudy, Washington

Today I’m writing what is on my mind and in my heart.  The personality I ‘use’ to greet the world on a general basis, is cordial, friendly and polite, as a general rule I enjoy people.  Like most people I am complicated, not more  so than others, all people are such a mix of qualities; I’m not certain all of us have public and personal personas, that we are able to call upon for different situations, I do have those ‘people’ that I can become, for a little while; come back to my real self when ‘that person’ is no longer needed.

Today I’m introspective Trudy.  Events beyond my control (as events often are) have taken place and are going to take place and I’ve found myself going back in time, remembering, digesting over again my life and history. The people who I’ve loved,  wondering if the memories I have are correct (sometimes memories need confirmation). I’m finding through conversations with my mother that most of my memories are correct.

My mother has been critically ill for several years.  She has been an extremely physically healthy woman, partly due to taking excellent care of herself and she is a strong woman, a survivor in a world that wasn’t always kind.  The very fact that she is living with this illness and it hasn’t yet taken her is because she is/was so healthy and strong.  Now her time is closing in, end stage cancer doesn’t leave survivors.  Needless to say all the memories of my life with my mother and my father are in my thoughts much of the time.

My cousin Ed Oas, who I was very close to as child,  and I was able to renew our friendship in recent years,  died last week.  He wasn’t expected to die, his sister Carol Jean and I thought he’d die a very old man like we all hope to.  Ed’s life, like my mother’s wasn’t always easy.  Carol Jean and Ed’s parents were killed in a horrible car accident on their way to a new home.  That is when our separation began, across a great country, which then seemed so large and so far and difficult for me to comprehend the real distance.  The pain for the remaining families and the little orphaned children was by some, almost unbearable, including my mother.  Her beloved little sister Marion (Pee Wee) was dead along with her equally loved husband Billy Oas.

My mother wasn’t well at this time (in the 1950’s this was described as having ‘nerve problems’), losing her sister only added to the abyss I know she felt she was in, she has explained it to me.  It would take her many years to recover.  But there were whispers, Carol Jean and Ed, where would they live, I thought I remembered my parents discussing taking them, adding  to their only child two more children that they both loved.  I’ve recently been able to confirm this muddled memory with my mother, it wasn’t something I dreamed it was correct.  Many other people were involved in the decision, and my mother, I believe now, bravely knew she wasn’t able to care for more children, not with her state of mind.  Carol and Ed (Peanut) were to live with their Oas grandparents in the state of Washington.  That didn’t make it easy for a family in Michigan with modest means to see or build relationships, the distance seemed to far, or maybe there were other reasons, I don’t know. The other side of that is that the children did have family in Washington.

Eddy will have a memorial June 2nd in the town he called home, Monroe Washington.  Carol has planned his formal memorial, and adding to this his friends want to celebrate his life with Carol Jean and the rest of the Oas family that still live in that part of Washington area.  I will be there, I will celebrate with his friends whom I do not know, and with Carol Jean who has become across the miles, visits and memories like the sister I almost had. Almost, at least in the mind of an eight year old who heard whispers and tremendous grief.  Children are always listening, a lesson for us all, children can understand to a degree depending on their age,  if not told they develop their own memory,  and it may take 50 years to find the truth.

This entry is about two people, my thoughts and feelings of loss for the unexpected  death of my cousin Ed, the impending death of my mother. Knowing that my mother is dying, does not make it less difficult, we’ve had a complicated relationship,  her life has been full, she made her life what it is through her own strength and determination, many obstacles in her way, she always regrouped and went forward with great pride and dignity.  That is what she has given me, strength, one goes on, pick up your pieces and get on with it, no one will do it for you.  At least that is her mind-set, and I’m guessing she hasn’t ever thought about that, she just forged on!

Our life takes us on many journeys, life happens, we control what we can and we learn to accept and live with what we can’t, and we never stop learning.  Life is a wonderful journey, I have lived in places I’ve not considered, visited places (even a reluctant traveler does travel) I would have only read about.  I’ve met people I’d never have had the privilege of knowing or loving, if life wasn’t so unpredictable.  Even with its unwanted surprises, and unexpected joys, life most days just goes along, a mixture of whatever we make it, and well worth living.  Who knows what’s around the corner?

The East Channel Lighthouse, My Babysitter

Tags

Lake Superior, Lighthouse, Michigan, munising michigan, nature, outdoors, travel, Upper Peninsula of Michigan

The light on the East Channel of Grand Island near Munising Michigan (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Times they are a changing, in fact they already have and I suspect the process will continue as long as there are people; we continue to evolve.  Seems at a certain age we look back on the ‘good old days’, time has often softened our memories, which is why they are now good!

When I look back at my childhood growing up in Munising Michigan, a small town in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula it’s always with fondness, even the snow is not so overwhelming; most likely because I no longer have any need to contend with it; even the snow had magical moments.

Munising Bay (Lake Superior) has an extremely beautiful island called Grand Island.  This island for me and for many others holds many special memories.  Families lived on the island, I’m certain they felt it was their own personal piece of heaven and the burial markers that stay in the small cemetery remind us they were there, spent their life, pioneering a heavily wooded, harsh, sometimes icebound island and at that time it was theirs.

Like most islands in large bodies of navigable water this one does have lighthouses to protect ships with their light in the darkest of night.   When I was a child the East Channel Lighthouse felt like it was my own personal structure, it’s light had long gone out.  I knew little of its history, just that my neighbor lady’s father had at one time manned the lighthouse; it hadn’t been used in many years.  It was in terrible condition in the early 1950’s and there were no plans to save or restore it, it was there in my case as a baby sitter.

Ah, a baby sitter?  How can a lighthouse be a baby sitter?  I am here to tell you how that happened to take place.  My mother and her friend Irene VanLandschoot worked during the summer and they had children that needed caring for, we weren’t little girls but we still needed to be occupied during the time of the day our mother’s were working.

When you grow up in Munising you learn to do many things, I don’t even remember how I learned some of my skills, seems they came naturally and many skills did come by trial and error seeing we had much more freedom to explore, and as I’ve mentioned, those times have changed.  One of our abilities was rowing a boat, doesn’t every 10 or 12 year old know how to row a boat on Lake Superior (having learned on smaller lakes I hope).

The VanLandschoot family in Munising, to this day are fisherman, and fisherman set nets way out in Lake Superior (at least they did back then), I believe those laws have changed along with the many other changes that were to come.  Irene, mother’s friend was part of the VanLandschoot fishing family and her daughter Paula Rae was two years younger than me.  Paula had a little brother (his name is Paul but he was called ‘Brother’ at that time) I assume he went with the men on the boat.  It must have seemed a great idea to get these two little girls together for the day and they would be out of trouble and our parents would know exactly where we were!  Problem solved and adventures for Paula and me.  Soon we would be teenagers and most likely wouldn’t have been a way they could have even tempted us to spend the day on the island alone, boring! I don’t remember how many of these trips we took, but enough to give me fond memories and amazement how free we actually were.

On a day that nets were to be set or maybe lifted, I’m not certain, it was a long time ago, it wasn’t one of the fisherman’s longer days, Paula and I would be on the fishing boat, dropped off with a boat to row ourselves onto the beach of Grand Island, pull up our boat and make it safe so the waves wouldn’t blow it away (a real problem) and we settled in right in front of the old lighthouse.   I’m amazed that we even knew how to beach our boat well enough and then to know when we would see the fishing boat returning to get back in our rowboat and meet the boat!  Amazing!  No wonder I won’t leave home without a watch!

We were armed with a bag lunch, some ‘pop’, chips, and cookies or something tasty, our mothers were excellent bakers.  My sandwich was most likely liver sausage and mustard on good old white Bunny Bread.  A great meal for growing girls and as I remember it tasted pretty darn good.   There is something delicious about eating outside!

The freedom to explore an island, walk along the shores of icy Lake Superior, inspect the caves, stand under water dripping from above and to go inside the very ‘spooky’ old East Lighthouse took a lot of time and occupied for the hours we were there. Surrounding the lighthouse  the field was filled with Sweet Williams, still one of my favorite flowers.  My grandmother had them in her garden and at one time someone must have had a flower garden around the old lighthouse.  Have you ever had the pleasure to enjoy the scent of an old-fashioned Sweet William?  I was born a gardener; if there were flowers I would be sure to find them.

Flowers from my garden. Common name: Sweet William Dwarf. Scientific Classification: Class: Magnoliopsida, Order: Caryophyllales, Family: Caryophyllaceae, Genus: Dianthus, Species: Dianthus barbatus (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I do remember a thunderstorm coming up one day,  if you’ve ever seen a storm whip it’s self up on Lake Superior you would know why Paula and I were a little nervous. We simple got ready and waited watching for the fishing boat and knowing we had to row to meet it.  We always knew that Paula’s father knew where we were and he’d make sure we were safe.  I doubt anyone told us that we were safe, it  was unsaid but understood that Mr.VanLandschoot would let nothing happen to us.

These are wonderful memories; the lighthouse has remained with me always, as special to me today as it is to so many others.  Caring citizens seeing it was going to slowly erode into Lake Superior and of course there are vandals’ even at such pristine and peaceful places have restored it.  It was not long after this time that all Pictured Rocks, which had been free for us to roam, was taken under the protection and preservation of the parks system.  Some of the residents didn’t like this, some did, it is progress and times really do change.

As I write and think about this time in my life all the possible worrisome things that Paula and I could have met left to spend the day on Grand Island with our babysitter the East Lighthouse it’s not with any thought why we were allowed to do such things, It’s how wonderful it was that we could.  Do any of you think that a child today would be allowed to take this venture?  Would parents be considered neglecting their child’s safety?

Pictured Rocks National Park, Miners Castle Photo taken on summer vacation, wonderful weather hot and sunny! hike to misquote bay was wonderful except for of course the misquotes! (Photo credit: Wikipedia)